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Unfortunately for Obama, on the other side of the crisis — whenever that is — he’s still going to need Russia.

His administration is still trying to salvage the Geneva talks on Syria that only started because Putin agreed to them. The Iran nuclear negotiations still ride on the united front that Russia and the United States, as part of the P5+1, are supposed to be showing to Tehran. U.S. counterterrorism agencies will want to talk to Russian counterparts and share information about looming threats.

And forget about conversations over missile shields or new trade openings. The only thing that seems secure for the moment is the Russians and Americans space collaboration — the Russians brought an American astronaut back on a Soyuz rocket Tuesday morning and didn’t leave him stranded on the snowy plains of Kazakhstan.

Moscow-Washington relations are going to be stuck in their worst state in decades, putting at risk the international collaboration that’s developed and that the Obama administration needs. The diplomatic theatrics at the White House Wednesday, argued former Council on Foreign Relations president Les Gelb, will only aggravate the situation.

“What’s the point of it? We’ve made clear we support the Ukrainian people,” Gelb said. “Is that going to make it easier for the Russians to say, ‘All right let’s make a deal?’ The opposite.”

Instead, Gelb says it brings the situation closer to what he calls an “ugly peace.”

“It’s ugly because it means all the areas where we want to cooperate will become much more difficult to bring about cooperation. It’s just the political reality in Moscow and in Washington,” Gelb said. “All these things are going to become stuck in concrete, the way they were during the Cold War.”

“It is time for the President to tell the nation why a cooperative world order is in jeopardy due to Russia’s unilateral actions,” Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski tweeted on Tuesday afternoon.

Michael McFaul, until recently Obama’s ambassador in Moscow, said he holds out hope that the collaborations will continue — but admitted that the last week has added to his skepticism.

“One always has to remember in these kinds of moments that decision makers don’t always act rationally in defense of their national interests,” McFaul said. Putin’s “decision to go into Crimea does not serve his national interests. So he’s perfectly capable of doing something in a second area that’s not this rational, pragmatic course.”

In Europe, which is more dependent on trade and collaboration with Russia, Syria and Iran come up frequently in conversations and the worry of Russia being shut out is very much on the mind.

“Once this current crisis is resolved we have to come back to a reasonable world,” said a senior German official speaking in Washington last week of the Russians. “We need them in some corners of the earth.”

“This is not the Cold War where Russia was isolated and economically independent of the rest of the world,” said Retired Gen. Wesley Clark.

McFaul said he doesn’t think Putin has a choice but to continue working with the United States.

“I don’t see Russia has a lot of leverage over us,” McFaul said. “On the main two things where we have cooperation—the Syrian negotiations and Iran — those are things that Russia is doing not as favors to the United States, but because they’re in Russia’s national interest.”

But in McFaul’s mind that’s it — there’s little hope for any new collaborations to deal with other flare-ups around the world.

“There’ll be a long period of disengagement between the United States and Russia. I don’t see any new initiative on a new set of issues cooperating happening any time soon,” he said.

And the problem won’t just be in Russia, predicted Gelb.

“It’ll become politically much more difficult to do any cooperation with them,” he said. “Instead of saying we need them to make these deals, the argument in Washington will be, ‘How can you trust the Russians on this? They’ll scheme against us.’”